She moves to the shelf behind her, fingers running over the glass jars. “The alphas’ ruts might sync with your heat. It’s a natural response when an omega is in proximity for this long.”
I close my eyes. “Of course they will.”
“I hate being an omega,” I say quietly. Not angry this time. Just tired.
“It’s part of who you are,” Cassia says.
I look up at her. “It’s a weakness. A liability. There has to be something you can give me to stop it.”
Cassia shakes her head, and something in me sinks. “I can’t, Mo. Suppressing your heat now would be too dangerous. Your body needs to go through this cycle naturally after all those years of forced suppression.”
“Dangerous how?”
“It could cause permanent damage to your reproductive system—or worse. Your body is already worn down from the wolfsbane and years of deprivation. Forcing another suppression on top of that could do real, lasting harm.”
I can’t imagine someone touching me, let alone fucking me in the place where those wires once held me hostage. My mind flashes back to the moment I was pinned down with my clothes ripped off, and there is nothing I can do to stop that needle from piercing my flesh. The agony of it comes flooding back. I can’t breathe.
“You are safe here,” Cassia reminds me in a soothing voice over and over again, rubbing slow circles on my back until my breathing starts to slow down. Her calm, steady presence grounds me, and I’m finally able to look up at her again.
“I’m broken.”
“You’re not broken,” Cassia says, handing me a glass of water. You’re healing. Remember that, Mo. It’s important.”
I stare at the floor for a long time. “Then what am I supposed to do?”
“Tell them. Tell them what happened to you. Be honest about how you’re really doing.”
I slide off the chair and onto the floor, my back against the wall. Cassia settles beside me like she’s done this before. And the words just start coming. I don’t decide to talk. It just happens.
“I don’t know how to tell them anything. I’ve spent my whole life hating alphas. But these guys…” I trail off. “Silas is gentle, and Archer respects me, and I don’t know what to do with that. Even Elias, with his stupid flirting—I kind of like it sometimes. Which is mortifying.”
I pull my knees up to my chest. “And then there’s Darius. He chained me up. He refused to let me shift. He called me his, like I was something he’d bought. And now he’s acting all distant, and I don’t understand him at all.”
“‘I had a sister,’ I tell her. “She protected me. Did everything right, everything the pack wanted. And they killed her, anyway.”
I rest my chin on my knees. “I don’t know who to trust anymore. Out in the woods, I knew exactly who I was. The survivor. The one who doesn’t need anyone. And now I’m sitting on your floor talking about my feelings, and I don’t know how to be this person and also be me.”
“The boys have been through a lot, Mo. They’re not perfect. But they’re good males. Not all alphas are monsters.”
I give her a look. She’s heard my whole speech, and that’s what she’s going with?
“I’m serious,” she says, and her voice changes. “When the coup happened, they saved me. I was about to be raped. And Darius found me.” She pauses. “He killed the male with his bare hands. I was fifteen. He was sixteen. He didn’t hesitate.”
I blink. Whatever I was expecting, it wasn’t that.
“Darius did that?”
Cassia nods. “He’s terrible at showing who he is. Really, he’s terrible at it. But he protects the people he cares aboutcompletely and without question. That’s who he is under all the brooding and the bad decisions.”
I don’t say anything for a while. I just sit there, turning it over. Darius at sixteen. A boy who’d just watched his father die, killing a man to save a girl. And then spending the next ten years carrying the weight of two broken packs on his shoulders, making every wrong choice look intentional because he couldn’t afford to look weak.
It doesn’t excuse the chain. It doesn’t erase what he said or how he made me feel.
But it puts a crack in the picture I’d built of him. And through that crack, I can see something I didn’t know to look for.
He’s broken, too. Just like me.
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